Tag: France

Visit Day 6: Chamonix

We waited with our trip to Chamonix for a perfect weather. We chose Thursday and we were not disappointed. Chamonix is a marvelous place where you can feel what high Alps mean. So as soon as we arrived on place we bought a day ticket for all lifts and we went to queue for Aiguille du Midi lift that took us on a great height of 3842 m.

I was on Aiguille du Midi in 2010 but this time a new attraction called „Step Into The Void” waited for me. It was a lot of fun for me but some people were seriously scared.

We spent lots of time up there especially that the sun that day warmed us nicely. So when we went down we needed to be hurry to catch up our second attraction „Mer de Glace”. Fortunately after a 30 min ride on a very nice train we were able to see and even lick the longest glacier in France.

  

After so many attractions we went back home to eat something tasty.

Visit Day 3: Annecy

We started visit day 3 with a trip to Annecy – a place I have seen thousands of time because it’s so picturesque that every visitor needs to see it. For summer Annecy – check out this post. Winter Annecy is way different. Today it was a bit grim, with heavy clouds hanging above the lake. Fortunately, a general colourfullness of this place (houses, alleys, flowers etc.) made the whole town view more friendly.

We strolled around the village and then stopped at a restaurant to grab a bite and sip on coffee. We ordered traditional cheese omlette and cheese dish (with Reblochon – local cheese). Coffee was served in a pottery made in Savoy (this region). How quaint and lovely… On top of that, as we were sitting by the bank of river, enjoying local goodies, sky turned a bit brighter and we could see sun reflexes. We didn’t stay too long though because later that day we had CERN visit scheduled.

Visit Day 2: Pointe de Chalune

During the second day of our friends’ visit we wanted to show them what we have best here in Geneva region, so I took them to mountains. We went to La Chevrerie and we tried to reach Pointe de Chalune (2116 m). Mountains during winter are beautiful especially for people who have never seen so much snow before. Magda and Michał needed some time to get used to the snowshoes but after some time they started to enjoy the hike and views.

Unfortunately, during our hike the weather turned bad and we needed to turn back after half of our way to the top. But going down gave us even more fun than going up. We jumped with our snowshoes off the track until we completely disappeared in snow.
Because we didn’t reach summit of Pointe de Chalune we decided to go and see a view point of Turet close to Gex, later that day.

Visit Day 1: Yvoire, Thonon

We are having a longly awaited friends’ visit this week. With so many fantastic places around, we have an action packed 7 days ahead 🙂 We are starting mildly, not to tire Magda and Michał too much on their first day. Yvoire is a must for every tourist. We’ve been there with Radek a couple of times (see this post), not once in winter though. It was a real delight to stroll down the medieval allays without many tourists around. The old town is small but lovely and the coastal area with the castle… Real delight.

Since Yvoire is a 1-hour-walk town, we decided to pop by yet another coastal village on our way back to Geneva. We chose Thonon-les-Bains because we (Radek and I) haven’t seen it yet. Although those little places are similar to each other, Thonon has something that distinguishes it from the others… It’s le funiculaire – sort of a tram for lazy tourists who prefer to have a ride up and down the hill instead of walking. Yep – that’s us 🙂 Well, the truth is – we are not lazy – it’s just that the funiculaire is an attraction itself and we wanted to check it out. It took us to the lake and back. Would be hard to push a pram all the way up!

Sur Cou (1809 m)

Thanks to a recent temperature drop we decided it would be lovely to go hiking in the mountains. The trip was longly planned and awaited – our destination: Sur Cou mountain. It was our first winter hike and it surpassed all my epectations. I mean, I am very enthusiastic about mountains so it surprised me that their winter face is even more enchanting.
So, a starting couple photo and off we go…

First passage was quite easy – the path from a firm snow moved through the forest. From time to time we were passed by skiers dashing through the snow. Every now and then treetops thinned a bit showing a spectacular view of surrounding mountains. However, it took some time to see our destination – Sur Cou mountain. There are two ways to get there, we chose a steeper but shorter one. As soon as we turned left on the junction, the path became steeper and way more demanding. After a while the forest finished, leaving us on the bare slope. That was the most difficult part of the hike, since there was really a lot of light snow, not tracked by hikers or skiers. We needed to watch our feet in order not to fall down. Just one wrong step and the racquette would tilt to the side taking the rest of the body along straight into a 1-meter-snow.

The conditions changed when we approached the top. It got way windier and as a result, the snow cap was thinner, making the ascent a bit easier. Well, 'easier’ is a bit subjunctive. As I was approaching the top, I was imagining I was climbing Mount Everest 🙂 Call me crazy, but I have never gone through anything similar and although I know it wasn’t particularly difficult, for me it felt like a real duel: man vs mountain. Radek was a bit faster than me so he claimed Sur Cou first and managed to take a photo of me struggling to get to top. Looks alpine, doesn’t it?

And now… a cherry on a pie… The views… Although the photos never give justice to a real panorama, I won’t describe much. It would be difficult for me to depict with words the feeling of exhilaration I had as soon as I found myself over the clouds… I love mountains and I learned that I prefer mountains in winter than in summer.

 

Visit at ALICE, CERN

This week we’re having guests – our mums came over to meet their grandson for the first time. We used this occasion to show them around CERN. I mean, it’s like the last chance to go underground to see the experiments because soon they will be close for visitors, getting ready for operation.

The visit started with SM18 site where magnets and other devices are assembled and tested in order to be ready for operation. Radek explained all the science behind, so mums had their private guide. Then they moved to point ALICE – a heavy-ion detector exploiting 'the unique physics potential of nucleus-nucleus interactions at
LHC energies’. In principle ALICE was built to find new phase of matter: the quark-gluon plasma.

Snowshoeing adventure begins: Le Turet (1375 m)

New Year – new adventures. We can now cross out „snowshoeing” from our to-do list. We had to take turns to be able to go on a trail, but it’s OK since we had different conditions and could later compare impressions and photos.

Take „Radek”:
Radek set out on his trip on Wednesday. It was way colder than the next day, so the snow was nice and neat, covering the pines and forming snow caps all over. The weather was sunny in general, however with the gaining height it got misty. Pros of mist and sun: lovely views through trees. Cons of mist and sun: no view at a viewpoint (see photo above).

Take „Ania”:
Iwent out the next day, on Thursday. Weather conditions were a bit worse, it got warmer and the snow melted and got heavy and watery. There was almost no sun and I didn’t do any photos from the trail (mainly because I was in hurry but also because Radek’s ones would be much better). However… When I reached Le Turet bench I was struck with a beautiful view of the sunset over Jura and surprisingly clear look over Geneva to the Alps. So I would say that by the powers combined in these two days we made most out of Le Turet.

Le fabuleux village d’Evian

We decided to go on a trip at the last day of 2013. Destination: the faboulous village of Flottins in Evian. This lovely city is situated right on the board of Lake Geneva. We chose it because of a festival that was going on between Christmas and New Year. I have no idea what/who Flottins are, but what I know is that the place was filled with the strangest wood sculptures one could imagine. 'Strangest’ is a gentle word to describe them, I think 'creepy’ is more accurate 🙂 Radek said that if he had found himself on a meadow with all these wooden creatures, he would have felt scared like hell. I agree. Nevertheless, spread across all over the town, they made for a very particular and absorbing view that we both really enjoyed.

 

We were both surprised by the multitude of the sculptures. Arranging them all over Evian must have already been quite an endeavor, not to mention actually crafting them!  We started our trip by walking along the lake shore, which was a good prelude to the rest of the visit, since the sculptures by the water were relatively less sumptuous than the rest. Then we headed to the old part of the city and walked through the alleys full of the weirdest installations…

We decided to leave the best part of the city – called 'le fabuleux village’ – to the end of our trip, so after a brief walk through the streets and stopping by for a cup of warm coffee, we set off to see Evian’s marina. Like every lake-side place here, Evian can pride oneself with a beautiful harbor for yachts and boats. We strolled down a calm and quiet boulevard by the water and enjoyed the sun and watching more sculptures scattered all over. 

Last but not least, we headed back to the town to see what was called „the fabulous village of Flottins” – a small passage filled with wooden goblins, gnomes, imps and who knows what else… Well there was even a huge hippo – kind of bizarre since hippos seem nice to me. But that one was huge and was opening its mouth every now and then like he wanted to devour the spectators, so in the end he suited well among other companions of this queer market.




Discovering France and Switzerland in autumn

I did a similar post about summer (check it out here). This time I want to show autumn marvels of the area we live in now. Although this fall is a special one for us and we weren’t able to visit as many places as we would like to, still even with those few we did, we came up with some nice autumn photo shots.

Divonne-les-bains

Jura mountains

Concourge – pumpkin festival in Vernier (those evil pumpkins were carved by children) – a bit scary, huh?

Vineyards in Challex:

Le Tiocan:

Park in Prevessin:

Lac de Divonne

With a remarkably beautiful weather today, we decided to go out to catch some sun. We went to Divonne-les-bains which we had visited a week earlier for Gourmandiv’ Festival. This time we went straight to the lake side (we hadn’t seen it earlier). We were planning to make a tour round water, but I was too tired, so we sat on a bench instead and relaxed in the calm atmosphere of warm sunbeams and surrounding nature.